Want to find a good alternative to dairy milk, which contains hormones, puss, blood and all sorts of other downright disgusting things? I was using store-bought almond milk but honestly it’s not really that great in itself. Contains soy-lecithin, all sorts of sweeteners, emulsifiers and stuff I can’t pronounce. If you don’t know what something is in your food… don’t eat it.

It’s been my goal to become more paleo-vegan by removing any thing processed from my diet and eat “real foods.” Eating things found in nature.

So this week, I decided to make my own almond milk. I figured this was going to be some weird process with all sorts of steps but it’s so easy I’m a bit embarrassed I hadn’t done this before.

Step One: Take a jar or large jug and fill it about 3/4 with raw almonds. Sliced, whole, crushed… doesn’t really matter. I used sliced that I got in a huge bag from Costco.

Step Two: Fill the jar with filtered water. Put it in the fridge. Leave it overnight.

Step Three: Using a Masticating juicer, spoon the almonds in slowly. The first pass will be more thick and creamy… that’s generally best as a creamer for coffee. If you want a consistency closer to milk, feed all the nut pulp back through. It usually won’t budge out and well just grind up in side the juicer. Pour the water you soaked the almonds in to wash it out and you’ll get a huge amount of almond milk coming out.

Step Four: I keep mine in a Mason Jar with a lid on it in the fridge. This isn’t homogenized so it will separate and you’ll need to shake it before using it. Expect it to last about 5-6 days, but if you’re like me, you’ll have already gone through it by that point.

Step Five: The remaining almond pulp can be used as almond flour. Spread it on a cookie Sheet, heat it up for about 10 minutes in the oven to dry it out as much as possible. Almond flour can be used in making, cookies, thickening oatmeal, pancakes and even some soups.